


Like some holy rite

by SerotoninUp



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Implied Sexual Content, Non-Explicit Sex, One Night Stands, Post-Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 04, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Sometimes when you’re sad and lonely you bang your ex, Touch-Starved, it happens to the best of us, sex as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24701131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerotoninUp/pseuds/SerotoninUp
Summary: The touch of Chloe’s fingertips against his wrist surprises him. Dan turns, brow furrowed, and she presses her palm to his, entwining their fingers.“Stay,” she says.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Dan Espinoza
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	Like some holy rite

Chloe drains the last of the bottle into her wineglass and sets it down with a graceless _thunk_ beside its empty twin on her coffee table. Sometime between opening the first bottle and finishing the second one, night fell, and the only source of light illuminating her living room is the glow from a half-dozen candles she lit sometime late this afternoon.

She raises a clumsy toast to the empty room and drinks to the Devil, because somehow today marks the sixth month of his absence, and the hole he left in the world is already filling in around the edges. LUX still draws crowds, though not the way it did when Lucifer held his court of temptations and favors beneath the strobing lights. His name goes unspoken at the precinct, except occasionally, in fond reminiscence, and never by those who knew him well.

Chloe isn't sure what expression she wears when she hears his name, but she recognizes the sudden trepidation on the faces of those close to her when some well-meaning acquaintance asks where Lucifer's been. Even Ella stopped asking about him after a couple of months passed with no word from her favorite method actor. Chloe didn't think a force strong enough to silence Ella's curiosity actually existed, but the universe continues to surprise her.

Six months. Six months since the Devil left the Earth to take up the mantle of Hell once more. Six months since he kissed her on his balcony, an _I love you_ and a _goodbye_ contained within one impossibly gentle, tear-stained press of his lips against hers. Six months since anyone touched her with such reverence, as if she were something holy, miraculous—something more than just a momentary flash of life against the endless backdrop of eternity.

Chloe sets the glass down on the coffee table, none too carefully, and the wine sloshes over the side to spill down her hand. She ghosts her fingers across her mouth and tastes the wine on her fingertips, and imagines her lips pressing against a different set of fingers, imagines elegant, gentle hands playing across her skin with as much grace and skill as they had when they danced across the keys of a piano.

The last hands that had ventured across her body—besides her own—were Cain's.

The memory makes her curl up into the corner of the couch, her arms wrapped tight around herself as she struggles to breathe through the sudden heaviness in her chest. The weight dragging down her heart burns like shame, like sorrow, like regret. 

She doesn't want to think about Cain's hands on her, seeking out her most guarded and hidden places. She doesn’t want to think about how quickly she gave herself up to him, so desperate to distance herself from her fears and frustrations that she ran blindly into his calculating manipulation of her affections.

It’s a horrible irony, that the world’s first murderer knew her more intimately than the man she loved. That the only touch her body has known these past few years was the touch of a cursed man, a liar. A monster.

A knock on the door interrupts her train of thought, and Chloe startles up from her fetal position on the couch. She can’t imagine what she looks like right now, after hours of drinking and wallowing in her own misery. She can’t open the door like this. God—well, _somebody_ only knows what the person on the other side of it will think.

She briefly considers just letting whoever it is walk away. But then the knock comes again, and she sighs and stands up, immediately losing her balance and nearly tumbling to the floor. She catches herself on the arm of the couch and closes her eyes, willing her feet to steady themselves. She rubs her hands across her face in a hurried effort to wipe away any stray tears.

“One sec!” she calls, not bothering to keep the irritation out of her voice. Once she’s confident she can walk without falling over, she makes her way to the door and opens it.

Dan stands on her doorstep with a plastic container in his hands. She blinks at him.

“Hey,” she says.

* * *

Dan stares at Chloe, taking in the dark circles under her eyes. Her face is splotchy and red, as if she’d been crying recently. There’s a plum-colored stain on her shirt.

_You look like Hell,_ he almost says, and luckily he catches himself before the words can slip out of his mouth.

“Hey. You, uh, you missed Officer Mendez’s birthday party today. I brought Trixie a piece of leftover chocolate cake.” He holds out the box and glances past her into the house. “Is she here?”

“She got invited to a sleepover,” Chloe answers, taking the box from his outstretched hand and setting it on the console table beside the door. “But thanks for bringing it. I’ll put it in the fridge for her.”

The raw sorrow in her eyes unnerves him, reminds him of the end stages of their marriage, the months before they decided to separate. It seemed like he was always hurting her, always keeping secrets from her, trying to keep her safe and breaking her heart in the process. Sometimes she would look at him with those same eyes, and the guilt would eat away at him for days afterward.

Dan shifts his gaze away from her, shoving away his shameful memories, and lifts his eyes upward. The moon hangs high and bright in the sky. Here and there, soft twinkles of starlight dot the inky darkness.

“Okay, great, thanks,” he says, his words rushed and awkward as he half-turns to leave. It’s a coward’s move, he knows, but he’s unable to look at her, unable to face the ghosts in her gaze.

The touch of Chloe’s fingertips against his wrist surprises him. Dan turns, brow furrowed, and she presses her palm to his, entwining their fingers.

“Stay,” she says.

Something swoops low in Dan’s belly at the luminous intent behind that single word. He clears his throat. “I don't—I don’t think that’s a good idea, Chlo.”

“Please.” Her voice remains steady, but her eyes glitter, reflecting the moonlight. “I don’t want to be alone.”

She pauses, glancing up at the night sky as if searching for something. She catches her lower lip with her teeth, and Dan watches the delicate pink skin whiten at the pressure, watches it become flushed and rosy upon release.

His pulse quickens.

Chloe takes a deep breath and looks him in the eye again. “It doesn't have to be anything more than just tonight. I just…” she trails off, and the lost expression on her face makes his heart ache.

Her hand against his feels strange, and new, not at all like something he’d already had and lost long ago. But it doesn’t feel dangerous, either. His heart isn’t at risk here. He holds no illusions about Chloe’s feelings toward him, about who her heart belongs to, and he understands the need for comfort all too well. He’s spent too many nights alone in his own bed this past year.

What she’s asking for—comfort, care—they are things he’s had too little of lately. And she’s right. This doesn’t have to be anything more than just two friends taking care of each other, helping each other through their rough patches.

Dan steps across the threshold, pushing the door shut behind him.

“Okay,” he says.

She nods, and tilts her head back to look up at him, her lips parted in clear invitation. Dan brings his free hand up to bury it in the golden silk of her hair, and closes his eyes, and kisses her, brushing his lips hesitantly against hers, wondering if she’ll change her mind. She makes a small sound in her throat, something sweet and desperate, and it sends shivers rippling down his spine. When they pull apart, tears cling to her lashes, but her smile is soft and genuine.

“Upstairs,” Chloe whispers, tugging on his hand, and where she leads, he follows.

In her bedroom, Dan undresses her slowly, and she trembles when his fingers brush her skin, like a wild creature unaccustomed to human touch, or something fragile that might shatter if he applies the slightest pressure. So he keeps his touches gentle, and he leaves tender kisses on her collarbones, between her breasts, against the silvery marks on her belly and the soft curls between her thighs.

Chloe sighs her approval and threads her fingers through his hair, but then she tugs him up to his feet. Her hands find the hem of his shirt and she pulls it up over his head. She presses a kiss against the pulse in his throat as she loosens his belt with quick efficiency, then hooks her fingers into the waistband of his jeans and underwear and pushes them down over his hips to pool haphazardly around his ankles. Dan steps out of his clothes, and Chloe closes the small distance between them.

The warmth of her, the taut lines of her body against his—it’s familiar and foreign all at once, and heat flares low in his belly. She kisses him again, then trails her fingers up his arms, over his shoulders, around his neck to run her nails lightly against his scalp. He shivers at the touch, and when she tugs at his hair, the pleasant twinge of pain pulls a satisfied moan from his mouth.

“Touch me,” she whispers in his ear, so Dan slides his hands along the curve of her spine and takes her to bed.

* * *

Afterward, they lie facing each other on the pillows, legs twined together, and Dan runs his fingers through her hair. It’s a familiar gesture, a throwback to the happier days of their marriage, and it soothes some of the tumult in Chloe’s heart. She closes her eyes and allows herself to feel a small measure of peace. It’s a feeling that’s eluded her for far too long.

“Chlo?” Dan says, his voice soft.

“Hmm?” she replies, too sated and comfortable to bother with real words.

“Why did you ask me to stay?”

_I didn’t want to be alone,_ she thinks. It’s what she told him earlier, struggling to hold back her need, not wanting to resort to begging but terrified that he’d leave her all by herself with nothing but her own broken thoughts for company.

She opens her eyes and looks at him. He gives her a small smile, a silent encouragement. _You can talk to me, Chlo,_ he’d told her once, in the weeks after Lucifer left. _I know you’re hurting._ And she had simply nodded in acknowledgment of his offer, her jaw clenched, not yet ready to lay bare the raw wound in her heart. Even now, she can’t quite find the right words to articulate the yearning ache she’d felt when she found him on her doorstep.

Dan notices her hesitation, and his next words surprise her. “I know what day it is, Chlo. I wasn’t surprised when I heard you called off ‘sick.’”

His other hand finds hers beneath her pillow, and he gives her fingers a reassuring squeeze. “I’m your friend, Chloe. I might not be happy that Lucifer took off and abandoned you, but I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

Her throat tightens, and her vision blurs as she reaches out to him. He pulls her into his arms, and she tucks her head beneath his chin, her hand coming to rest against the steady beat of his heart. Dan drops a kiss on the crown of her head and resumes stroking her hair.

A companionable silence settles around them. The sick, lonely feeling in her heart begins, slowly, to ease. Dan is still holding her, his pulse a reassuring lullaby in her ear, as Chloe drifts off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for Bad Things Happen Bingo. Prompt: Touch-Starved.  
> Title from “Only If For A Night” by Florence + The Machine.  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
